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Tomorrow Saturday July 15th, hundreds of striking low-paid health workers in the East London Barts NHS Trust will be marching. Speakers include John McDonnell MP Labour Shadow Chancellor. The workers started with two days of action last week and are now in the middle of a 7-day strike. If there is no resolution by July 25th, they will begin a two week strike that day. Please come and join the solidarity demonstration to support the cleaners, porters and security guards who work for Serco, who are using agency firms to try to break the strike. The whole labour and trade […]

2017 National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) Conference: 11am-4.30pm Saturday July 1st in Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL. £6 fee Time to fight back against the Tory Cuts and their anti-union laws! The fightback has started. The bosses and the Tories hailed record low strike figures in 2015 but are now hysterical about ‘union power’ as workers increasingly take action against cuts and attacks on living standards. RMT members are striking against train companies like Southern Rail who have been backed up by the government to the tune of £20 million. Unite members in Heathrow walked […]

Open letter from blacklisted construction workers We the undersigned, are writing this open letter in the spirit of fraternal debate amongst members of the newly merged UCATT / UNITE construction union. The upsurge in industrial militancy in the last few years demonstrates that when the official union works alongside rank and file activists, it is possible to mobilise workers even in a hostile environment. The merger offers an opportunity to start anew the fight against the appallingly high fatality rates and casualization of the construction industry by combining the best traditions of the two unions. However, one issue threatens to […]

Unions are under threat. It’s no accident that the Tories announced their (anti) Trade Union Bill at the same time as they roll out yet more cuts. They fully understand that the unions, with 6 million members, can be a major obstacle to another austerity wave and the fight is on. Junior Doctors are striking and teachers are balloting against forced academies while steelworkers are increasingly calling for Tata to be nationalised. 10th annual National Shop Stewards Network (NSSN) conference – Saturday July 2nd in Conway Hall, 25 Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL – 11am-4.30pm. Conference fee is £6 […]

Hired thugs beat rank and file trade union protesters Last Monday, a group of civil servants in Praia Grande, Brazil, who are in struggle for a wage increase of 12.5%, occupied their trade union (linked to Força Sindical), offices, against the treacherous actions of the union leadership which threatened to sell out their dispute. After five hours waiting for the Union president, they were surprised by 20 henchmen and they were beaten in a cowardly manner. Please, send urgently messages of your solidarity with these workers against such abuse. They mainly fight for a real increase in their wage […]

URGENT – CAMPAIGN FOR REMISSION OF ANDRÉS BÓDALO’S SENTENCE AGAINST THE CRIMINALISATION AND REPRESSION OF SOCIAL PROTEST From the SOC-SAT (Union of Agricultural Workers-Union of Andalusian Workers) we ask for urgent collaboration in our campaign to collect signatures for the plea for remission of Andrés Bódalo’s sentence. He has been jailed for his participation in an act of social and trade union protest. Andrés Bódalo has a long history as a social activist. Added to his dedication as a trade union leader, participating in innumerable actions in defence of labour and social rights, is his political vocation. He is councillor […]

The National Shop Stewards Network sends our support and solidarity to the thousands of steelworkers, their families and the steel unions who are trying to come to terms with the news that Tata is looking to sell off its UK steel business. This means that what should be a fundamental foundation of the economy and the jobs and communities that go with it are under real threat. We organised a solidarity meeting in Port Talbot last month when Tata announced that nearly 20% of the 4,000 direct jobs in the works were to go. We called for the UK plants […]

The Tories will be re-branding the minimum wage as National Living Wage this Friday April 1st. The 50p rise is nowhere near enough to take low-paid workers out of poverty pay and the under-25s are excluded! But we won’t be fooled by Osborne’s gimmick wage! To counter the Tory hypocrisy, a campaign is being launched to fight for a real minimum wage of £10 per hour with no youth exemptions. This is being headed by the BFAWU bakers’ union, the GMB and the Hungry for Justice / Fast Food Rights coalition (in which the NSSN campaigns alongside the BFAWU, John […]

I was recently elected as the delegate representing the Thames Valley on the National Pensioners Convention Executive Committee. The NPC represents 1.5 million pensioners, many of them members of trade unions who mostly finance the organisation. We are a campaigning body that fights for pensioners through out the country not only for their pensions but also issues ranging from social care to public transport and dignity in old age. We campaign against cuts to services, hospital closures and austerity. We took our banner on the recent TUC lobby of Tory Conference and we lobby Parliament on a regular basis. Our […]

The NSSN took part in the demonstration on Sunday in London against Saturday’s bombing and also a press conference in TUC Congress House yesterday in solidarity with a 2-day general strike in Turkey. Below is a press release from Day-Mer (Kurdish and Turkish Community Centre) www.daymer.org The growing call for peace cannot be silenced We stand in solidarity with the people of Turkey calling for peace and condemn the current government of Turkey for its role in these deadly attacks. A peace and democracy rally in Ankara, Turkey was targeted on the morning of Saturday 10 October 2015, […]